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Life Sciences More Than Doubles Sector Investment After Pandemic Upheaval

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After more than a year of grappling with a historic global pandemic, and the ensuing upheaval that impacted every established economy and industry across the world, one sector of commercial real estate has prospered so effectively that venture capital funding more than doubled from first-quarter 2020 to the same period in 2021.

According to a new report by CBRE, “U.S. Life Sciences: The Biotech Revolution Emerges Even Stronger Post-Covid-19,” this is exactly the state of the life science sector today, and it may be the salve that helps heal an industry in the wake of an unprecedented public health and economic crisis.

“While there’s so much upheaval in commercial real estate — whether it’s offices, retail, hotel, what have you — life sciences, laboratory R&D space, and manufacturing have only strengthened,” said Ian Anderson, senior director of research for CBRE, who authored the report. “I don’t think there’s one element in the data where we haven’t reached a new record as we speak, and it just continues to get stronger.”

In addition to the massive increase in venture capital funding, CBRE reports that the demand for life sciences space across all major markets has grown by 34 percent since mid-2020. And, while more than 15.6 million square feet of speculative space is currently under construction, it is exceeded by tenant requirements being driven, in part, by massive increases in the sector’s employment.

“U.S. life sciences employment reached a record high in March 2021, driven by the revolution in biotechnologies and other industry advancements,” read the report. “Industry job growth has jumped nearly 15% since March 2017, surpassing growth in the technology sector.”

As venture capital, employment and general demand grow, so have rents throughout major life sciences markets. The report’s findings include a close to 50 percent increase in lab and research and development rents in the Boston-Cambridge cluster, and almost 40 percent for the same sector in San Diego since the end of 2017. Life sciences rents in Philadelphia, meanwhile, have increased by 35 percent since the middle of last year.

All of these drivers have combined to position life sciences as a dominant sector in commercial real estate in 2021 and beyond, as investors clamor for involvement and seek investments that provide stability in the midst of widespread market volatility.

“The COVID-19 pandemic fueled some of the alternative sectors, so health care, data centers, and life science centers were some of the beneficiaries of investors moving away from more traditional product types and into more purpose-built facilities,” said Chris Bodnar, vice chairman and co-head of Healthcare & Life Sciences Capital Markets at CBRE. “The investor pool is looking for that stickiness of the tenant going forward, especially in light of what’s happened in the office sector and concerns about how work-from-home will impact renewal probabilities.”

The evidence is especially strong in New York City, where “ … lab leasing activity has already reached a record high for a single year, at 257,000 square feet through May 2021,” according to CBRE’s findings. As contributors to the increase in activity, CBRE highlighted the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai’s recent lease of 165,000 square feet of research-focused space at 787 Eleventh Avenue, and also noted C16 Biosciences’ 19,000-square-foot lease at the Hudson Research Center, where the Bill Gates-backed startup will relocate from its incubator space at BioLabs New York.

According to Anderson, the explosion in demand for life sciences investments over the past five to six years marks the coalescence of numerous trends, including the fading effects of the 2008 recession leading to greater economic optimism, more accessible capital, insurance companies pressuring corporations to find more cost-effective solutions, rapid advancements in technology, the pandemic-driven decline of other sectors, and the extraordinary investment in the search for solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In many cases, the fact that so many other industries were in distress caused investors to look for brighter opportunities,” said Anderson. “Real estate developers and venture capitalists all of a sudden saw a new industry in the spotlight.”

Bodnar also sees three other reasons investors are going all-in on life sciences.

“One is, you can’t do research from home. Putting lab space in your home is not a viable option,” Bodnar said. “No. 2, we don’t anticipate [National Institutes of Health] funding for this sector slowing down anytime soon —we only see it accelerating. And No. 3 is that venture capital funding is accelerating. Capital flowing into this sector from private equity and venture capital is growing exponentially, and this doesn’t go unnoticed by real estate investors, some of whom are even making investments as venture capital partners with biopharma companies.”

Given all of these market forces, it’s unsurprising to see owners converting real estate initially dedicated to other sectors into life sciences facilities.

“You’ve got a lot of commercial real estate holders — could be owners of suburban office buildings or even downtown office buildings — looking for some type of silver lining; some type of better exit for themselves. So, they’re looking at converting to labs,” said Anderson. “Office owners have been through such a troubled time over the past year, and some of them have been carrying buildings in distress for many years. So, they see a potential opportunity to make a quick and easy out, and convert their office building to laboratory.”

“We’ve even had some groups talk to us about converting medical into life sciences,” said Bodnar.

And, while life sciences is now pulling from other sectors, it’s also spreading into geographical areas beyond traditional clusters like Boston-Cambridge, the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego.

“Raleigh — one of the hotter markets — is more traditional, but that market is just so impressive,” said Anderson. “Not only have we seen huge demand for laboratory R&D space, but also for biomanufacturing and high tech. So that market continues to impress. Pittsburgh has also been impressive. And a few that are emerging that we haven’t talked about in the past as much are Portland, Salt Lake City and Dallas. They’re probably in the beginning stages, but we’ve seen a lot of venture capital go into those markets.”

Taken all together, the report’s findings indicate that while life sciences has been the notable winner in commercial real estate throughout the pandemic, it’s possible we still haven’t scratched the surface of how strong the life sciences sector will become.

“I’ve been tracking this space for years now, and it just continues to get stronger and more intense each year,” said Anderson. “The demand for laboratory R&D space by the life sciences industry is stronger than ever.”

 

Source: Commercial Observer

$3B Med Tech Company Takes Its Global Headquarters To Dallas

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Medical technology giant DJO Global is relocating its headquarters from San Diego to Dallas early next year.

North Texas will serve as the company’s global headquarters and include a customer experience center and a facility that fosters collaboration, according to a press release. DJO was purchased by Maryland-based Colfax Corp. in November of this year for $3.15 billion.

In addition to the relocating employees, the company says will create hundreds of jobs in the Dallas area including a new distribution center in Fort Worth, which opened a few months ago and has 200 employees. DJO creates braces, joints, inserts and more used by orthopedic surgeons, primary care physicians, pain management specialists, physical therapists, podiatrists, chiropractors, athletic trainers and other healthcare professionals, who use them for injury prevention and and physical therapy.

“We made the strategic decision to move our headquarters to Dallas to expand our presence into a market with a strong and larger pool of talent, gain greater and more efficient customer access and take advantage of what we believe is a better corporate environment for our company as we grow,” said Brady Shirley, DJO’s President and Chief Executive Officer via release. “At the same time, we felt it was important to continue the 40-year legacy of DonJoy in Southern California by continuing to build our Bracing business in Carlsbad.”

 

“This move is a key component of a multi-phase facility optimization strategy that DJO embarked on earlier in the year to enhance the look and feel of many of our offices, bring teams together and remove unneeded workspace in our U.S. locations,” said Jeanine Kestler, Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer for DJO via release. “We are excited to become one of the leading medical device companies headquartered in Dallas and an active member of the community!”

 

Source: Healthcare Magazine

Healthcare Developers Need Flexibility To Succeed

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The world of healthcare real estate has experienced more profound change in the past few years than perhaps any other sector.

Along with advances in medical technology, the transformation of healthcare delivery by the introduction of Obamacare has led providers to demand different types of facilities. And that means opportunities for developers and investors, if they understand the marketplace’s new realities.

The construction of massive hospitals is no longer wanted, experts agreed at Bisnow’s National Healthcare Midwest 2018 event in Chicago. BEAR Construction Co. project executive Victor Senese moderated a panel that examined what builders can expect in the future.

“We’re not building any new bed towers,” said Jeff Janicek, vice president of healthcare for Skender, a Chicago-based construction firm. That is primarily because healthcare systems are now required to improve efficiency, and many providers have decided they can achieve these goals by caring for people in their own neighborhoods. “There is now more of a focus on specialty groups.”

And with Amazon and other internet retailers putting pressure on traditional retailers, now is also the perfect time for developers to create new medical offices at low cost.

“There is a ton of retail space available,” Janicek said. “The anchor store in a local mall may no longer be a grocery.”

“The current demand is so great that many providers’ chief concern is getting new outpatient facilities up and running quickly,” BJC HealthCare Executive Director of Planning and Design Donna Ware said.

She estimated it typically takes about 18 months to design and complete a medical office building.

“We need to be faster than that,” Ware siad.

But like Janicek, she believes the real estate already exists if you look in the right places. Buildings recently occupied by groceries, even pizza parlors and other restaurants, can serve as outpatient facilities after a relatively modest amount of reconstruction.

“Other types of development will be more complex,” Environmental Systems Design Operations Director Randall Ehret said. “The Affordable Care Act started a mad dash to outpatient facilities. Many of these delivered basic care, but in the years since providers have also started establishing new intensive care units and other facilities that use more advanced medical technology. A lot of these are infrastructure intensive.”

The shift to decentralized facilities doesn’t mean developers will always fix up old grocery outlets. In fact, with so many medical professionals moving away from big hospital campuses, office buildings dedicated to healthcare are growing.

“Twenty-five years ago, the medical office building was between 10K and 20K SF,” HSA PrimeCare President John Wilson said.

These structures were occupied mostly by small physicians’ offices. Today, HSA sees a lot of demand for buildings between 150K and 200K SF, sometimes dedicated to one tenant, such as a hospital system. Chicago-based HSA recently finished the 109K SF Drexel Town Square Health Center, an outpatient and diagnostic center in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a Milwaukee suburb, for Froedtert Hospital System and the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Wilson considers it a model for the future. Like most new facilities, it treats people with a wide variety of concerns, and includes a cancer treatment center, an emergency room and many other services..

But what the panelists most emphasized was the need for flexibility in design. The clients for the Drexel building, for example, originally wanted about 75K SF, but after a deeper evaluation of the community’s needs, ended up asking for 109K SF..

“If demand for its services intensify, the building can be expanded even further to about 130K SF.” Wilson said “It has to be almost like an accordion.”

“Healthcare needs are always changing and new technologies are always on the way,” Ware added “so developers need to think ahead.”

Ehret said his firm puts a lot of thought not just into what a particular space needs today, but also what it might need tomorrow. A neighborhood’s pediatric unit may get replaced by a senior care provider as local demographics shift. New machines that did not exist when a room was designed may need to be squeezed in.

“And even though flexibility can carry a pretty hefty price tag, in the end healthcare providers will appreciate it,” Ware said.

 

Source: Bisnow